FBI identifies Indymedia for counter-terrorism surveillance
FBI Keeps Watch on Activists
Antiwar, other groups are monitored to curb violence, not because of ideology, agency says.
By Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writer
March 27, 2006 [from the 27 March 2006 Los Angeles Times]
DENVER — The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show.
For years, the FBI's definition of terrorism has included violence against property, such as the window-smashing during the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization. That definition has led FBI investigations to online discussion boards, organizing meetings and demonstrations of a wide range of activist groups. Officials say that international terrorists pose the greatest threat to the nation but that they cannot ignore crimes committed by some activists.
It's one thing to express an idea or such, but when you commit acts of violence in support of that activity, that's where our interest comes in," said FBI spokesman Bill Carter in Washington.
He stressed that the agency targeted individuals who committed crimes and did not single out groups for ideological reasons. He cited the recent arrest of environmental activists accused of firebombing an unfinished ski resort in Vail. "People can get hurt," Carter said. "Businesses can be ruined."
The FBI's encounters with activists are described in hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act after agents visited several activists before the 2004 political conventions. Details have steadily trickled out over the last year, but newly released documents provide a fuller view of some FBI probes.
"Any definition of terrorism that would include someone throwing a bottle or rock through a window during an antiwar demonstration is dangerously overbroad," ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner said. "The FBI will have its hands full pursuing antiwar groups instead of truly dangerous organizations."
ACLU attorneys say most violence during demonstrations is minor and is better handled by local police than federal counterterrorism agents. They say the FBI, which spied on antiwar and civil rights leaders during the 1960s, appears to be investigating activists solely for opposing the government.
"They don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but they're spending money watching people like me," said environmental activist Kirsten Atkins. Her license plate number showed up in an FBI terrorism file after she attended a protest against the lumber industry in Colorado Springs in 2002.
ACLU attorneys acknowledge that the FBI memos are heavily redacted and contain incomplete portraits of some cases. Still, the attorneys say, the documents show that the FBI has monitored groups that were not suspected of any crime.
"It certainly seems they're casting a net much more widely than would be necessary to thwart something like the blowing up of the Oklahoma City federal building," said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado.
FBI officials respond that there is nothing improper about agents attending a meeting or demonstration.
"We have to be able to go out and look at things; we have to be able to conduct an investigation," said William J. Crowley, a spokesman for the FBI in Pittsburgh. His field office filed a report — released by the ACLU this month — in which an agent described photographing Pittsburgh activists who were handing out fliers for a war protest. The report mentioned no potential violence or crimes.
Crowley said his office had been looking for a certain person in that case and had closed the file when it realized the suspect was not among those handing out the leaflets.
The murky connection that the federal government makes between some left-wing activist groups and terrorism was illustrated in a Justice Department presentation to a college law class this month.
An FBI counterterrorism official showed the class, at the University of Texas in Austin, 35 slides listing militia, neo-Nazi and Islamist groups. Senior Special Agent Charles Rasner said one slide, labeled "Anarchism," was a federal analyst's list of groups that people intent on terrorism might associate with.
The list included Food Not Bombs, which mainly serves vegetarian food to homeless people, and — with a question mark next to it — Indymedia, a collective that publishes what it calls radical journalism online. Both groups are among the numerous organizations affiliated with anarchists and anti-globalization protests, where there has been some violence.
Elizabeth Wagoner said she was one of the few students who objected to the groups' inclusion on the list. "My friends do Indymedia," she said. "My friends aren't terrorists."
Rasner said that he'd never heard of the two groups before and didn't mean to condemn them. But he added that it made sense to worry about violent people emerging from anarchist networks — "Any group can have somebody that goes south."
Denver, where the ACLU fought a lengthy court battle with local police over its spying on political groups, has the most extensive records of encounters between the FBI and activists. Documents obtained by the ACLU there revealed how agents monitored the lumber industry demonstration, an antiwar march and an anarchist group that activists say was never formed.
In June 2002, environmental activists protested the annual meeting of the North American Wholesale Lumber Assn. in Colorado Springs. An FBI memo justified opening an inquiry into the protest because an activist training camp was to be held on "nonviolent methods of forest defense … security culture, street theater and banner making."
About 30 to 40 people attended the protest; three were arrested for trespassing while hanging a political banner. Colorado Springs police faxed the FBI a three-page list of demonstrators' license plate numbers.
In a recent interview, Denver FBI spokeswoman Monique R. Kelso first said the training camp and protest would not have been enough to merit an anti-terrorism inquiry. But later she said that she wasn't familiar with the details of the case and that the FBI opened cases when there was possible criminal activity.
The FBI's Denver office also monitored a February 2003 antiwar demonstration in Colorado Springs. A bureau memo said that activists planned to block streets and an Air Force base entrance, and that a more "radical" faction had announced online that it would meet near the demonstration but break away for unspecified purposes. The memo said an agent would watch the breakaway group and report to local police and FBI agents monitoring the march.
FBI officials say there was additional information, which they cannot disclose, that justified a terrorism investigation of that protest. They stress that they have to be aggressive in investigating terrorism in the post-Sept. 11 world.
"There's a lot of responsibility on the FBI," said Joe Airey, head of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver. "We have a real obligation to make sure there are no additional terrorist acts on this soil."
Denver-area activists said that since the surveillance documents became public, there had been a subtle chill, with some people avoiding protests for fear of ending up in an FBI file. Some activists think the FBI has been watching their groups to intimidate them.
"We've kind of gathered up our skirts and pulled in," said Sarah Bardwell, who works for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. Along with some activist roommates, she has also volunteered for Food Not Bombs.
"In our house, we don't talk about politics anymore," Bardwell said. "There's been a toning down of everything we do."
That change came after six FBI agents and Denver police officers visited her house in July 2004.
Months earlier, the FBI had obtained a flier advertising a meeting near Bardwell's house to form a chapter of Anarchist Black Cross. That movement has two wings; one, according to the FBI, has been associated with "some of the most violent left-wing groups of the past 40 years."
The organizer of the meeting, Dawn Rewolinski, said the prospective chapter would have been part of the movement's other wing, which writes letters to prisoners. The chapter was never established, Rewolinski said. "All we did is eat some cookies and talk about various prisoners and realize we didn't have enough money for a P.O. box."
Nonetheless, FBI investigators believed a Denver chapter had been launched. They discovered that Anarchist Black Cross was affiliated with Food Not Bombs, and authorities ended up on Bardwell's doorstep, asking about the anarchists' plans for protests at the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions.
Kelso, the FBI spokeswoman, said there were documents that could not be released to the ACLU that showed good reasons for the government's concern. She dismissed the idea that agents were spying on activists for political reasons.
"We don't have enough agents," Kelso said, "to go out there to monitor and surveil innocent people."
good post, quite realistic
Same with ASIO big budget in place now here. Mainly they have nothing but their own wage bill to promote and tub thumping bureaucratic empire building to develop.
Mainly.
Hence we get usually decades after the event files revealing peace campaigners mundane domestic detail revealed in ASIO files sourced obviously from a close observer or presumably 'friend' as reported by a prominent peace activist playwright of the 1950's in the Sydney Morning Herald recently in a story by Sunandra Creagh.
Only the naive would think that is not the case now too.
But there are exceptions of legitimate concern of the ASIO etc around political murderous violence which have nothing to do with civil society groups.
I stopped on my City News delivery run and talked to a security guard last Sunday outside a Defence Dept office here in Sydney CBD in Pitt St. This is one head office of the spooks here.
He was low on the food chain and he commented "its a matter of when not if" echoing ex Premier Bob Carr's form of words. Who wonder's Carr quit partly over that risk assessment and prefering to step away from the red bullseye target?
Last Sunday was also the day the front pages here ran a bomb plotter arrest story by a 26 year old needing psychiatric assessment according to lawyer Adam Houda and who was described by the police on ABC radio as "a sad case", a "candle in the wind". What a brutally honest form of words that sounded.
Which is all to say why my ecology action and The Green Party and The Wilderness Society, Greenpeace and others here all have a grand moral tradition of promoting Gandhi style nonviolence as a religion and a pragmatic real politik, as below. The far far bigger question for ASIO and FBI is "Why is this prescription not taught in our schools?":
http://cpppcltrust.tripod.com/ecologyactionsydney/id14.html
Gandhi's ten principles of nonviolence:
1. Humiliating or deliberately provoking your opponent invites violence.
2. Knowing your facts and arguments well helps avoid violence.
3. If you are open about your cause your opponent is less likely to be violent.
4. Look for common ground between you and your opponents to promote trust and understanding.
5. Do not judge others.
6. Trust your opponent. They will sense this trust.
7. Compromise on inessential items to promote resolution.
8. Sincerity helps convert your opponent.
9. By making personal sacrifice you show your sincerity.
10. Avoid exploiting weakness in your opponent. Aim for integrity, not simply to win.
We at ecology action presume to add this: The next unexpected tense situation you find yourself in, try copying this presecription for group harmony and anonymously pinning it up somewhere it can be seen. You will be surprised by its effect as everyone who notices finds themselves automatically agreeing with its common sense albeit idealistic and often unachievable in total.
In the process of so agreeing each person actually opens a door to tolerance and a new idea of how to relate to their protagnonists ... in the work place, the home, in politics or where ever. But notice Gandhi was not passive. He promoted peaceful confrontation of injustice.
In our world there are endless causes for peaceful confrontation especially in an environmentally unsustainable western world.
Click here for one of many web links on the life and teachings of nonviolence guru Gandhi, still with the power to profoundly change people and make life easier.
http://www.mkgandhi-sarvodaya.org/
Activists vs Terrorists
While it's understandable that people want to distance themselves from 'the terrorists' given the dangers involved with being thought of by the authorities as affiliated with terrorism, any call to go after 'real terrorists' will be interpreted as a call to only harrass Muslims and Arabs.
Any attempt to seperate 'legitimate' activists from 'terrorist affiliated' groups will invariably be drawn along religious/racial lines.
Activists are right to object to excessive surveillence and policing, but should also reject excessive surveillance and policing of radical Islamic groups. Of course most activists already do, but the issue is so important it is important to express this clearly.
getting real
ABC radio last week reported lawyer Adam Houda for one Jill Courtney not seeking bail, and seeking psychiatic care. She is alleged to have intended to bomb the public. This was reported on the front pages of both major newspapers. Looks pretty serious.
Is there a role for legitimate surveillance in such a case? I ask this as someone doing delivery work of indy media throughout inner Sydney who doesn't want to get blown up for any ones alleged criminal agenda.
As with the drive by stuff going on and Arabic Jamal calling into ABC radio just now who is also "very concerned about the huge impact it is having in his community in South West Sydney" just now.
I can advise that most mainstream green, and likely civil society groups basically agree with dictum 3 above:
"3. If you are open about your cause your opponent is less likely to be violent."
Sure, they like discretion but they accept Big Brother as a reality.
So would less secrecy amount to less violence including by govt and authorities on social and economic policy. I should think so because there is just less fear in all directions when one knows clearly a situation.
Also any comment on the Jack Van Tongen case reported widely including Crikey etc of having fled bail on allegations of bombing chinese restuarants over in WA. He is not of the ethnic group or religion in focus. Is this good evidence of nonbias, or just token?
I would be glad to hear from NSW Civil Liberties and Amnesty International on this, especially the practicalities, not just the high brow principle which did nothing for about 50 dead people on tubes etc in London. And no I didn't vote for Howard and yes did walk against the war.
(copied for reposting as necessary)
George Bush Invades Iran
An earthquake which has left hundreds dead in Iran was caused by the U.S. exploding nuclear devices underground, a reliable internet source states.
Hundreds dead, injured from series of temblors
Friday, March 31, 2006; Posted: 6:44 a.m. EST (11:44 GMT)
var clickExpire = "-1";
(CNN) -- A series of earthquakes struck western Iran early Friday, killing dozens and flattening entire villages.
At least 66 people were killed and 988 injured, a medical official in Lurestan province told the official IRNA news agency.
The state-run news service put the magnitude of the quake at 6.0, and the U.S. Geological Survey pegged the temblor at 5.7.
The
quakes were centered near Boroujerd and Doroud, two industrial cities
about 210 miles southwest of Tehran, the official Islamic Republic News
Agency reported
U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- speaking during a visit to
England -- said the United States was prepared to send humanitarian
assistance if it was required. She denied United States involvement in the Quake - or that 'humanitarian aid' would involve any kind of invasion.
The quake was sandwiched between
two less-intense quakes measuring 4.7 in magnitude. All three quakes
hit the region during a nine-hour period, with the first one hitting
western Iran Thursday about 7:45 p.m. (1645 GMT)
Television
showed survivors standing next to their destroyed houses in villages
north of Doroud. The television also showed dozens of sheep and goats
killed by the quake.
Barani said hospitals in Doroud and Boroujerd were full to their capacity.
"We are afraid to
get back home. I spent the night with my family and guests in open
space last night," Doroud resident Mahmoud Chaharmiri told AP by
telephone.
In
February 2005, a 6.4-magnitude quake rocked the town of Zarand in
southern Iran, killing 612 people and injuring more than 1,400.
reliable internet source not sourced
quite a statement that. No actual internet sourcing provided. Non sequitor to a CNN story. This is about as irresponsible or incredulous a claim as one can make that could provoke less educated who might not realise that the internet medium has a major credibility gap already, as does other media, and provides no more or less reliability beyond the normal research and referencing rigour of any other medium, newsprint, radio, tv, book, or whatever.
ASIO mixed record re political ultra violence, Sunday Ch9
Ran yesterday Sunday 2nd April. Pretty balancedl, good insights on the work of ASIO. Predictably conservative endorsement on "the spy agency we have to have" or similar. Transcript not up yet but the synopsis is extracted below. A good list of diverse political and diverse ethnic group based ultra violence is listed including ultra right fascist behaviour that ASIO did not do very well on. Then as one would expect discussing current high profile subjects around the topic of political violence.
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_1955.asp
The spying game
April 2, 2006
Reporter :Sarah Ferguson
Producer : Nick Rushworth
Sunday lifts the cloak on the secret operations of Australia's domestic intelligence organisation, ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
With a $130 million funding boost, ASIO will double in size over the next four years. Intelligence insiders tell Sunday that such a rapid expansion will lead to mistakes.
Former Director-General of ASIO Alan Wrigley tells Sunday that ASIO's mistakes have cost lives in the past: wrong judgments on terrorist groups have led to bombs going off in Australia and, on at least two occasions, Australians being assassinated by foreign agents.
Since the first Bali bombing, the focus of ASIO's work has been counter-terrorism but ASIO is now boosting its counter-espionage capacity. Sunday has uncovered details of an ASIO operation against an Iranian cleric — Sheikh Mansour Leghaei — accused of spying on Australians. For the first time on television we will play a tape of an actual ASIO interrogation, as the ASIO officers try to uncover the Sheikh's connections in Iran.
Sunday also uncovers details of the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack on Australian interests in the region.
The spying game — a revealing look at Australia's secret spy network.
A transcript of this story will be available shortly after the program.